Law & Disorder —

It could be worse: data caps around the world

Here at Ars we spend a lot of time writing about data caps—those ceilings on how much broadband data you can use before your ISP taps you on the shoulder and tells you it's time to pay more. Depending on where you live, these can range from "inconvenient" to "ruinous." For instance, consider the Middle East's Kingdom of Bahrain.

"My capacity refreshes on the 1st of each month and is depleted by the 12th," writes one Internet user there. "At that point my connection falls to 256Kbps (or if I choose, can maintain the same speed for 1 BD [US$2.65]) a GB."

"So while Canada's situation does suck," he adds, "I wish I was there instead of here."

As we note below, Canadian ISPs definitely cap data use. That country's Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission seems to think this is a reasonable approach. In fact, the CRTC is currently running a proceeding on how to "discipline" Internet usage in Canada.

Companies like Netflix are "putting a great stress on the Internet and there's no incentive for companies to invest in maintaining the Internet," the Commission's head Konrad von Finckenstein warned in early February.

That got us wondering as to how the crusade to whip broadband subscribers into proper behavioral patterns is going in other parts of the world. So here's a quick snapshot of the landline residential broadband data cap situation in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. We'll extend this inquiry to wireless and other parts of the globe over the coming months.

The United States

AT&T. 150GB data caps will kick in for AT&T DSL customers as of May 2. First time over, you get a disciplinary message. Second time, "AT&T will send you a notice advising you that the next time you exceed your allowance—the third time—you will be billed $10 for each 50 GB of data over your allowance."

Comcast. The ISP announced its 250GB data cap limit in August of 2008. As with Comcast, the first time over, you get a call from the company. "If you exceed 250GB again within six months of the first contact, your service will be subject to termination and you will not be eligible for either residential or commercial internet service for twelve (12) months," Comcast's FAQ page explains.

Time Warner Cable. TWC abandoned its disastrous experiment with 100GB for $75/month in 2009. But the company still has an "acceptable use policy" that lets it reel in anything it experiences as "abuse" of its network, "including the use of excessive bandwidth." It has no hard caps, however.

If you exceed these limits, you'll be charged from CAN$.50 to CAN$5.00 a gigabyte, depending on which plan you're on, with a maximum extra charge of $50 a month. Rogers lowered some of its data cap ceilings last July, just as Netflix streaming entered the Canadian market.

TekSavvy. Canada is in the middle of a long argument over whether to apply usage-based billing rules to smaller, competitive ISPs that connect with Bell Canada and Rogers for network access. At the beginning of this year the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was poised to impose metered billing on indie ISPs, with a 15 percent discount.

As a consequence, Ontario-based TekSavvy announced that it would impose 25GB a month data caps on subscribers, down from 200GB. But outrage over the CRTC's move forced the government to back down. It was in the context of this uproar that von Finckenstein's "disciplinary" remark emerged.

At present, TekSavvy offers residential DSL for CAN$31.95/Month at "up to" 5Mbps with a 300GB a month data cap, or with no data cap for CAN$8 more. Subscribers can also buy a cheaper plan with no cap at a slower throughput rate.

But BT says the telco plans to remove these limits at some point in the future.

"As BT continues to invest in the network and network bandwidth we can now remove these restrictions and ensure the experience of the wider customer base," declared Mayuresh Thavapalan, general manager of Consumer Broadband at BT Retail. "On completion there will be no individual user controls targeted at atypical users on our BT Total Broadband and BT Infinity products."

Although Option 3 and Infinity Option 2 are advertised as unlimited, reports say they slow down when subscriber usage strays past 300GB. And the asterisks next to those plans lead to a caveat that they are "Subject to Network Management."

"Customers who are classified as very heavy users will experience significantly reduced speed at peak times," BT warns, "(typically 5pm-midnight every day but these times may change depending on the demand on the network) for a period of 30 days, or for as long as very heavy use continues. This applies to customers on all Options."

We think you deserve more. So no matter which of our fibre optic broadband packages you chose, you get unlimited1 downloads. That means you can download as much music, as many films and as many photos as you want without having to worry about going over any kind of limit.

Ars readers are no doubt staring at the "1" next to "unlimited." It points to Virgin's acceptable use and traffic management policies. The acceptable use language bars activities that are "illegal," "unlawful," or "inconveniecing [sic] other internet users."

The traffic management policy notes that "at peak times we also slow down the speed of file sharing traffic—that's services like Limewire, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Newsgroup (Usenet) traffic. You will, of course, still be able to use these services, but downloads and uploads will take longer during these peak periods."

In other words, Virgin's unlimited downloads are subject to disciplinary limitations, albeit without data caps.

Australia

Telstra BigPond. Telstra's BigPond broadband plans come with caps, but when consumers reach their limit, they're not charged extra cash. Rather, as in Bahrain, BigPond slows them down. And we're talking about serious brakes here. After 2GB, the Turbo 2GB Liberty plan throttles from 1500Kbps (ADSL) or 8Mbps(Cable) to 64Kbps. Ditto for the 30Mbps Cable plan.

Those packages cost AUS$9.95 and AUS$19.95, respectively. For AUS$49.95 you can buy the BigPond Elite 50GM Liberty plan, which comes with a 50GB cap. For AUS$20 more, the 200GB Liberty tier comes with a larger caps and a "generous" 256Kbps speed after hitting your threshold.

Optus. Optus' high speed Internet plans have caps too, but subscribers are "disciplined" in a somewhat different manner. For example, the 30GB plan allows you to consume 10GB during "peak" times and 20GB during off peak hours, which Optus defines as so:

Peak data is for use between 12pm-12am AEST/ADST. Off Peak data is for use between 12am-12pm AEST/ADST If you exceed your off peak data allowance, usage will be counted towards peak data allowance.

Once subscribers reach these limits, the ISP drops their speed to around 8Mbps to 64Kbps. For the 120GB plan plug 50GB peak and 70GB off peak into that scenario. For 500GB it's 250/250 for AUS$69.99.

iinet. Australia's second largest telco ISP, iinet, offers a similar approach. "If you exceed your quota, we just shape your download speeds for the remainder of your billing month," iinet assures consumers.

So the ADSL1 Home1 plan offers 1500/256Kpbs upload and download speeds with a 5GB peak and 5GB off-peak data cap for AUS$34.95. If consumers go beyond that, their throughput rate is shaped down to 256/128Kbps, or 256/256 for other plans. Some plans include throttling discipline that goes as low as 65Kbps.

"At the end of your monthly cycle, the normal speeds of your plan will resume and your quota will be reset," iiNet promises. "We never charge excess fees on plans that include shaping. If the customer wants the service to remove the shaping before the quota reset, they must upgrade their plan."

Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar

403 Reader Comments

I find that inexcusable that If I break my 250gb limit with comcast twice, within 6 months of each other, I'll be punished by not being allowed to use their internet service, and in my case I would have to move to find another broadband ISP? I'm really speechless at these types of practices. punished for actually using a service that I pay for? wow......

simply astounding that our governments on a local, state, and federal level do nothing to prohibit the extortion of customers in this way. because thats what it boils down too, these companies now have a federally backed license to extort.

Your Australian prices for BigPond are out. Those prices are if you bundle a full-service phone line with them which costs an arm and a leg in itself, and there's an extra bonus if you have another service with them like a post-paid mobile.

The 200GB plan costs $99.95 per month without bundling, the 50GB plan is $79.95 per month. On its own, the 2GB plan is $39.95 a month.

I think you've been a bit generous to Virgin Media. They throttle what they consider to be "heavy users" even when there's no illegal activity.

For example, if I try to download the latest iOS SDK after 4pm, I'll get the speed reduced by 75%. The reduction in speed lasts for 5 hours. The loss of bandwidth makes, say, an iChat impossible after that.

There's no cap, per se, but it does affect your behaviour. (I tend to do big downloads first thing in the morning for example. The US isn't online any more and I won't get throttled at peak times.)

They do document the limits, though there's no way to check how close you are to that limit:

It must be noted that in the United States there are dozens of local and regional providers who generally have no announced datacaps and use that as a selling point, but they are often badly oversubscribed.

Your Australian prices for BigPond are out. Those prices are if you bundle a full-service phone line with them which costs an arm and a leg in itself, and there's an extra bonus if you have another service with them like a post-paid mobile.

The 200GB plan costs $99.95 per month without bundling, the 50GB plan is $79.95 per month. On its own, the 2GB plan is $39.95 a month.

You need to dig a little deeper, Ars

Ya, that "$9.95" plan is actually $39.95/monthAlso for iinet the adsl1 plans are for customers not on iinet hardware (aka hellstra or craptus's) The adsl2+ plans are the normal ones. when bundling with a phone the caps essentially double, so iinets 200gb plan (with phone bundled) is $79.95 uto the (bundled) 1TB plan for $129.95

To be fair to Virgin Media, while its service might be slower and more expensive than its Scandinavian equivalents, they provide a much better deal than in North America. I do wind up scheduling my downloads for after 9pm, but the upside is that I always get very close to my theoretical speed at any time of the day, even during "peak hours". And I use torrents and newsgroups, and have never had any issue with throttling.

If discretionary throttling in the evening is the price to pay for truly unlimited service, then so be it. I once downloaded 1.3TB in a month, didn't hear a peep from them.

Here in Taiwan, the largest telecom CHT wanted to make their new 20M/2M broadband service with a data cap, for usage over 200GB per month to have reduced bandwidth (10M/2M) until next month. Fortunately the NCC (something in the government which is similar to FCC), denied the request. CHT then started to provide 20M/2M service without the data cap, but said they "will be watching the usage pattern and wish to make another proposal again."

It's this that gets me: "putting a great stress on the Internet and there's no incentive for companies to invest in maintaining the Internet,"

I call BS. Capping data is an easy way to fall back from building your infrastructure. Where is the incentive to upgrade this last mile if you can just throttle back customer usage? I bet if there was side by side competition, a real open market, they'd find their incentive. This is a power grab and they are trying to force their paradigm on the populous.

Internet bandwidth is going to continue to grow. The entertainment industry already see's the new 'cable TV' as being the internet and all these corporations are posturing in order to carve their piece of market share. They are not stupid. They see that Netflix and other start ups are ahead of the power curve and TCP/IP content delivery systems are the future, and they will do what they can to hold onto power. I suspect that's why Comcast's merger was what it was. A marriage of content and delivery and now everyone is willing to screw over the little guy for what amounts to short term profits.

Allow competition. These monopolies are stifling innovation all the while lining the pockets of shareholders and politicians. This new digital age could be awesome if we don't let it be destroyed by those who have no inherent right to capitalize on it at the public's expense.

"Such stringent bandwidth caps limits ensures countries will not have cutting edge internet services, such as Netflix or Hulu founded or based in their borders."

Oh yes, no cutting edge video-on-demand system like the BBC iPlayer could ever have been conceived in Great Britain.

caps are kinda new in UK and there is already a lot of static between the ISPs and BBC over the iplayer as they feel that BBC is using their tubes for free... Seriously ISPs need to be regulated as common carriers with exactly zero input on the traffic that is going through and completely forbidden to do anything other than providing internet access.

The whole data caps BS is just so that they can sell their own media services that just happen not to count towards the cap.

The UK has good uncapped options for those who care about it. The really pointed comments are more for some of the other places.

Btw, have there been more numbers recently about how (un)stretched the network providers are? The last big set of data I can remember was the mandated public disclosure from Canada which showed they were squealing without much justification.

"Such stringent bandwidth caps limits ensures countries will not have cutting edge internet services, such as Netflix or Hulu founded or based in their borders."

Oh yes, no cutting edge video-on-demand system like the BBC iPlayer could ever have been conceived in Great Britain.

You're missing the point. Netflix and Hulu are based in the US, but they risk getting choked by backwards policies here. These ISPs are exploiting us because they lack adequate competition and their de facto monopoly power is left largely unchecked, with the rhetoric supporting such policies often evoking the value of free markets, a term which does not describe ISPs in the slightest.

Banzai51 wrote:

That's no excuse.

I couldn't agree more. The fact that other countries are getting screwed harder doesn't make them screwing us okay.

This sort of make me not wanna move to the UK from Norway. Norway hasn't had any bandwidth caps for quite some time now, and I regularly run up between 500GB-1TB traffic (or more) in a month. Anyone have any good tips on what ISP to approach in the UK, namely Wales?

I find that inexcusable that If I break my 250gb limit with comcast twice, within 6 months of each other, I'll be punished by not being allowed to use their internet service, and in my case I would have to move to find another broadband ISP? I'm really speechless at these types of practices. punished for actually using a service that I pay for? wow......

simply astounding that our governments on a local, state, and federal level do nothing to prohibit the extortion of customers in this way. because thats what it boils down too, these companies now have a federally backed license to extort.

speechless.

Indeed! What if like most places there ARE no other options out there... any sort of FCC appeal process I wonder?

I find that inexcusable that If I break my 250gb limit with comcast twice, within 6 months of each other, I'll be punished by not being allowed to use their internet service, and in my case I would have to move to find another broadband ISP? I'm really speechless at these types of practices. punished for actually using a service that I pay for? wow......

simply astounding that our governments on a local, state, and federal level do nothing to prohibit the extortion of customers in this way. because thats what it boils down too, these companies now have a federally backed license to extort.

speechless.

yet you could complain to your local government except for the fact that they have been bought off by lobbyists.we are all doomed

maybe I'm just not a "power user"...but how in the hell do you routinely need more than 250GB a month?

I second this. Only time I even come remotely close is when I reload a computer and re download games on Steam. Normally ~150GB is average for me.

I was thinking if you had a family of 4 or 5, and everyone streamed Netflix, played Xbox Live, Steam, did a lot of Pandora... plus if you work from home... how long would it REALLY take to hit 250 GB a month?

Just wanted to point out, there are unlimited options in Canada (at least on the east coast). In Nova Scotia, there's Eastlink which has no caps, and in most of the maritimes, there is BellAliant which is uncapped (although Rogers in New Brunswick has caps).

My "choice" of ISP is limited to one of three options. Time warner cable, Phone company DSL, or DSL provided by a local ISP. Of course my neighborhood is so old that the phone lines are shot and DSL isn't "available" in my neighborhood because the phones lines are of such poor quality.

So in reality if I want decent internet I have to use Time Warner.

They don't have caps, but they also won't fix my cable service either as their lines for that in this neighborhood are shot that whenever the temperature is between 30-50F I lose half the stations. every time.

This sort of make me not wanna move to the UK from Norway. Norway hasn't had any bandwidth caps for quite some time now, and I regularly run up between 500GB-1TB traffic (or more) in a month. Anyone have any good tips on what ISP to approach in the UK, namely Wales?

Having moved from Norway to Wales I found that you can't get any ISP service even resembling what there is back home, though the worst bit is how crap the customer service is and how little you can do when they're screwing you over - my girlfriend still has a black mark on her credit rating after a dispute where Orange themselves told us to stop paying (but only verbally) because they'd "accidentally" given away our phone number to someone else, thereby killing our broadband service...

Personally I'd stick with Virgin or O2, O2 because they're the only ISP I've come across in the UK with good customer service, and Virgin because they normally provide a better connection without caps.

Since the government thinks that satellite Internet should be classified as "broadband" let me add my info: $80/month for 1.5Mbps/512Kbps and a 17GB cap. If I go over the cap in any month my access is throttled down to 128Kbps/128Kbps until my 30 day total is down below 13GB.

maybe I'm just not a "power user"...but how in the hell do you routinely need more than 250GB a month?

I second this. Only time I even come remotely close is when I reload a computer and re download games on Steam. Normally ~150GB is average for me.

I was thinking if you had a family of 4 or 5, and everyone streamed Netflix, played Xbox Live, Steam, did a lot of Pandora... plus if you work from home... how long would it REALLY take to hit 250 GB a month?

A family is one thing. Now imagine a shared flat full of students...

Also, to expand on things outside entertainment, services like dropbox and other online storage and back-up services are also becoming increasinbly popular.

Also, in the Comcast example you don't need to need 250 GB routinely just twice in 6 months. Their user base is large enough that a significant number of people will have 2 "exceptional" months in a 6 months period and then get cut off.

United States/Time Warner Cable: The company still has an "acceptable use policy" that lets it reel in anything it experiences as "abuse" of its network, "including the use of excessive bandwidth." It has no hard caps, however.

Yellow journalism. While Time Warner used to have a cap, they currently have NO CAP. Why can't you just leave it at that? EVERY ISP has the "acceptable use clause" in their service agreement, TWC is no different.

I use RCN. They also have NO CAP, just like TWC.I heard Verizon is thinking about caps for their service. It's just hearsay though.

The situation isn't better here in Argentina. Okay, we don't have caps yet, but DSL and cable companies throttle torrent and DDL sites (MU/RS) for half of the day. Being the 8th largest country in the world by land area doesn't make it easy (or should i say not profitable) for any company to lay down fiber. I chose cable because phone lines here in my area are too deprecated for ADSL to work properly and the Fiber service is out of my budget, and with cable i get free TV, so i don't have to relay on laggy streams to get my weekly dose of tennis and football (soccer) matches.

I have a 5 mbit line (It works at 5 mbit from 1:00 am to 12:00 am) for 35 dollars. The contract didn't specify any data cap, so i'm trying to figure that out myself downloading overnight every kind of file there is. I'm already at 100 gb for the first 4 days of April, i wonder if i'll get a call from my isp in the next days.

What I don't get is that instead of increasing their capability, with which I mean getting better equipment, upgrading lines, etc, the ISPs are now basically saying "We are no longer going to try to increase your satisfaction as customers" and fall into this crappy method of thinking that they need to "regulate" internet traffic because they don't want to invest in their infrastructure... I guess this is what happens when you let ISPs effectively have monopolies or oligopolies in areas?

Rather, as in Bahrain, BigPond slows them down. And we're talking about serious brakes here.

They're not kidding around - when we're shaped on a cable connection, it can go so slow I'm unable to even check Hotmail, sometimes for days. They might as well cut you off completely, it's so slow.

DevlinB wrote:

Heck, 10GB a month? Services like Steam become unusable, 1/5th (or more!) of a monthly cap just to download a game?

Exactly. In my case, 20GB a month ($80,no phone bundle) in a sharehouse - you have to check with your housemates before downloading even some stupid demo off XboxLive. Accidentally leaving the wrong torrent going for a couple of days can ruin your whole month.

It doesn't help that Xbox demos are actually the ENTIRE game, just crippled. Anyway, that's the subject of a seperate rant...